For one of her latest feature length films, writer-director Chandler Levack (I Like Movies) taps into her previous career as a journalist and culture critic. Mile End Kicks (which premiered at TIFF last year and was a part of the organization’s Canada’s Top Ten) tells the story of Grace Pine (played by Barbie Ferreira), a journalist in her early twenties who leaves Toronto behind in the summer of 2011 for what she’s hopes is a formative trip to Montreal. While there, Grace plans to write a book about the influence of Alanis Morissette’s seminal Jagged Little Pill album, and hopes to immerse herself in the local music scene she loves so much. Things get complicated due to feelings of personal and professional inadequacy and her developing of feelings for two members of the same local indie rock band (played by Devon Bostick and Stanley Simons).
We talked to Levack about Mile End Kicks (which coincidentally opens in theatres the same day her other new film, the teen comedy Roommates, premieres on Netflix) and discussed what it’s like to enter a new scene and feel profoundly uncool, balancing personal and professional writing instincts as a journalist, how the film uses text and period appropriate technology to take viewers back to 2011, the importance of Alanis Morissette to the story, why it sounds like Canadians sometimes come across as passive aggressive, and making a film in Montreal with close Quebecois collaborators.
Mile End Kicks opens in select theatres on Friday, April 17, 2026.
